


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:41:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The early days of William’s unlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Gold Can Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Vague spoilers for BtVS ep “Fool For Love.”

**I**

  
  
_Scritch-scritch-scritch. . . ._  
  
Drusilla’s pretty little stray spends his days thus: nib dancing feverishly across foolscap.   
  
Fine-fingered hands--that’ve seen even less hard work than Liam’s had--gesture gracefully as William paces, murmuring his sonnets aloud to hear the flow of them.  
  
Then he’s ensconced at Angelus’s desk, quill absently brushing pale-pink lips as he struggles for this or that elusive phrase.  
  
High-flown nonsense, all of it, to Angelus’s way of thinking.  
  
Yet caught in the throes of this particular passion, the boy is irresistible. . . .  
  
Angelus means to have him, ‘ere the setting of the sun.  
  


**II**

  
  
A cool, whisky-scented breath stirs his hair; William shivers absently.  
  
“You  _do_  know you’re a bloody  _awful_  poet, don’t ya?”  
  
Long used to such disparagement from harsher and more knowledgeable critics than the one lurking behind him, William refuses to be discouraged.  
  
“The aim of any true poet, sir, is not excellence, but self expression. And when I find the word that captures Drusilla’s smile  _and_ rhymes with ‘repine’ . . . I shall, indeed, have expressed myself.”   
  
William is lost, once again, in thought.   
  
Had he looked up just then, he’d have noticed the gold of Angelus’s eyes was slightly . . . green.  
  


**III**

  
  
“There’s nothin’ in this house that I don’t own.”  
  
Drusilla’s bedroom reeks of blood, tears and semen.   
  
“I own the pens you scribble with, and the paper you scribble on. I own the bed you lay in--I own the woman you lay with.   
  
“Everything you value--everything you consider yours belongs to me, Will . . . includin’ yourself. You’ll do just fine if you remember that.” He sweeps his hand over porcelain-fine skin, flecked here and there with blood.   
  
William’s scent is angry and resentful . . . but he no longer flinches away. Angelus smiles, sleepy and sated.  
  
“You’ll do just fine.”


End file.
